


what can't hurt me anymore (nothing in it but pain)

by bessemerprocess



Series: capital follies [1]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, The First Hunger Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/pseuds/bessemerprocess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing is random about the first ever Hunger Games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what can't hurt me anymore (nothing in it but pain)

The rebellion is dead, and her mother and sisters along with it. She is the youngest, a mere child when the fighting started. Cedar Obinashki is a child no longer, not here in this Capital cell, waiting while the powers that be figure out how to make the execution of a fourteen year old palatable to the Capital.

The cell is not a dungeon, not the way she'd pictured the Capital locking up rebels at all. She'd always picture something out of one of the horror vids that came out of the Capital: dark and dirty, with blood stains on the walls. The room is plain, though, painted white with a single ledge for sleeping and sitting, and so sterile, Cedar might as well have been the only person to ever step foot in it. It's better than anywhere she's slept in the past year, anyway, and the Capital seems intent on feeding her.

Sometimes the guards bring Capital people by to peer into her cell, all made up into dolls. She's not really sure why they bother. What's one more rebel child? She thinks there must be a hundred of them, maybe more, and she was nothing special, not the way her sisters had been.

Birch had been a leader, bringing their people together and keeping them fighting even as the war turned and Ash had been trained by the Capital themselves to be a commando. Willow had been younger, but she'd become adept at supplying them, even when neither money nor love could buy a loaf of bread. Cedar had always been the baby. Too young to fight in the beginning, and for her sisters, always too young no matter how tall she grew. 

Ash had finally taught her how to shoot two years ago, when Cedar had grabbed a gun out of a dead man's hand and shot a peacekeeper intent on killing her first. She's pretty good these days, not that that saved her in the end. She'd been disarmed, still in her night clothes when the peacekeepers found their camp. There had been screaming and fire and confusion, and she'd ended up thrown over a peacekeeper's shoulder, like a human trophy. 

Now she sits in a white cell and waits. They can't let her go, Cedar knows they wouldn't dare, not with her last name. Even if she herself wouldn't dedicate the rest of her life to overthrowing the Capital, someone could use her as a figurehead for their own movement. And the Capital is sick of war. Birch had thought that was why the Districts would win, back when such a thing seemed possible. The Capital loved luxury and idle gossip, warm bodies and full bellies, and everything that shined. War torn ruins don't shine, and without grain and coal from the Districts, there are no full bellies and no warm bodies. No one expected the nuclear weapons. No one expected District Thirteen to be obliterated.

They stop bringing her food on a Monday afternoon. Lunch is always at noon. The Capital loves precision, but lunch never comes, and dinner, too, is absent.

Cedar has known hunger all her life. First because of the Capital's taxes, their incessant demand, and then due to the rebellion itself. She doesn't understand why the Capital wants her to starve to death though, and why made-up freak shows keep coming by to watch. If she's going to starve to death, she'd rather not be watched doing it.

Five days without food, a tall man, made up in shimmering purples, comes to her cell. "Are you hungry?" he asks.

"Of course," she replies, stopping herself before she rolls her eyes.

"There is a game. If you volunteer, there would be food," he says, like he is offering her a favor.

"And if I don't volunteer?" she asks.

"Then there will be no food," he replies.

She doesn't want to play the Capital's game, but she is hungry, and she knows she is going to die anyway. "Why?" she asks.

"Because we need to be unified now, and because if you win our game, you will not be the only one fed, your District will be, too. They desperately need you to win, Cedar."

She knows he's telling the truth. People had been starving before the war, and now the field lay fallow or burned and not everyone was going to make it through the winter, not without help. "I'll do it."

He nods. "Read the text into the mic," he says, and hands her a piece of paper.

"I, Cedar Obinashki," she says with a steady voice, "volunteer as tribute for the First Hunger Games."


End file.
